An Indication of Something's Passing
Trace Posner, District 5
x
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
'Celestial Music', Louise Gluck
x
"Trace, Caroline's on her way up the lawn," my mother calls from down the rickety stairs that lead up to my and my sister's little bedrooms.
Caroline is always over – and thank God, because she's like, something approaching a spiritual guide to me. Since the failure of the Mockingjay Rebellion, it's pretty clear that the Capitol's been updating its policies a great deal – less inter-district isolation, more exchange of information, more liberties. That's cool. To an extent, District 5 has been an epicenter of change, of evolution, of growth!
We're not a small district - a handful of people milling around couldn't meet the energy needs of the entire country. We're divided, as some of the other districts are, into sectors for functionality. Petroleum processing takes place in a completely different District 5 than, say, the construction of photovoltaic cells.
That isn't always great on the Capitol's end - you really get the sense that they want each district to unite as a unified whole. Makes them easier to control, less likely to go off allying with other districts and mounting a whole new rebellion. Nationalism helps the Capitol just as much if not more than it helps the people and cultures that the nationalist sentiment empowers. Whether or not that's unscrupulous and fascist - let's be honest, here, it is - fostering district pride ultimately keeps us subjugated, which is pretty obviously a check mark in the 'world domination' column for our benevolent leader.
Like, I'm not sore about it - I get it, can't say I wouldn't be doing the same thing. And I benefit from the programs that are ostensibly in place to strengthen inter-sector unity and 'Make District 5 Proud' (a real slogan, on real signs) in the form of… well, fun after school programs, mostly.
A lot of mid-middle-class kids like me get involved in inter-sector academic competitions thanks to the promise of travel, scholarships, and potential job opportunities. That's how I met Caroline - she's nineteen now, graduated out of secondary school and working in the administration of one of the hydroelectric facilities in our sector. Recruited right out of school, already has her own apartment. A real success story.
Most of the competitions focus on design (generally architectural, focusing on whatever your sector's specialty is), though Caroline was into policy advocacy when she competed.
Anyway, it's all a massive sham to convince us that we're better than the other districts, but like… what else am I going to do with my free time? Turn down an opportunity that has direct potential to improve my life? I don't think so. Maybe someday I'll be a big enough fish to fight that battle, but… not today.
The doorbell rings.
"Trace!" my mother calls again from downstairs. "I'm on the phone, can you let her in?"
"Sure, mom!" I reply, scooping up my bugling and threadbare file folder and bounding down the stairs.
Caroline already has an eyebrow raised when I open the door - she's short and freckly, with bushy brown hair that she only so much as drags a brush through when she needs to look professional. Not today, judging by the jeans and thin grey t-shirt she's wearing.
"Off work this morning?" I ask, gesturing her in with a smile.
"Yeah, reaping day - essential staff only. Apparently pencil-pushers aren't the ones holding the dams together."
I laugh. "Well, this is one day that feeling superfluous can't be a bad thing."
"Exactly. I slept in till eight. Do you know how long it's been since I did that?"
"The perils of being an actual grown up adult with a job."
She hops easily up the stairs, more out of familiarity than grace - she's been coming around ever since I started participating in policy advocacy in the tenth year of school and she took me under her wing. We're likeminded people, in the sense that we both question things a little too much and pay a little too much attention to what's going on in the world around us, but are also hyperaware of how little power we actually have.
I usher her into my combination office-ish-bedroom - a day bed and a desk that occupy most of the space, stacks of binders in every corner. A few fresh ones lay open, adorning every surface from the floorboards to the two folding chairs. Hastily, I stack these into something resembling order.
"So, how much prep work have you done already?" Caroline says expectantly, eying my messy desk - prep comes first, always.
"I made a bunch of file requests," I tell her, brandishing one of my large binders. "Been reading up on a ton of the more recent stuff hydroelectric has been at. Some interesting structural stuff about dealing with ice, what with climate variation. Hasn't been implemented large-scale - there have only been a few pilots run on that. I think it would sell well."
She nods agreement, leafing through my binder. "Agreed. This is some good stuff. Though lately there's been a push for better worker safety - I think that's something any proposed innovation needs to address. How will it make people safer?"
This is why I love Caroline - I would never think of that, would end up digging through endless piles of technical nonsense and disregarding the human element in favor of what is logical. My rhetorical style needs all the help with humanization that it can possibly get.
"Ah!" I say abruptly, thinking back to an old report about dam safety hazards that I cited a few months ago. "Injuries/fatalities during winter months - obviously they're more dangerous when they're icy, right?"
Caroline grins. "Perfect. How does it link? How does your innovation solve winter safety hazards?"
I have to stop and think again. "Well… I can't say that directly, I mean, but I can sort of link it, I guess. Dealing with ice buildup is a human job, and a hazardous one. Reducing the necessity to address ice buildup will decrease the number of people working dangerous jobs. Boom, they're safer. Injuries go down. Fatalities go down."
"Perfect!"
"But… jobs go down too."
"Let's stop with 'injuries and fatalities decrease.'"
I can feel my face contorting at this. "That feels disingenuous."
"Come on," Caroline insists, "you have a six minute speech to sell this. What's more important, lives or jobs?"
"It doesn't seem like that should be a dichotomy - at least, the judge should weigh that for themselves, right?"
She shrugs. "It's not your job to undercut your own case. How much of this do you have mapped out already?"
Glad to shift subjects, I pull out a smaller manilla folder and show her the speech structure I've been working on. She nods and makes appropriate 'hm' noises.
"You know where some of this will be changing, right? Your impacts and analysis need updates to match what we've been talking about with he worker impact. Your old evidence is good, it'll work here - just tag that card and bring it with you."
"Easy."
She shuffles through more of my papers as I rewrite the tagline of my structure, as carefully as I can to stave off the complete illegibility of my normally very messy handwriting.
"When will I start seeing articles published with your name on them?" I ask her, conversationally, as I approach a degree of done-ness.
Her eyes don't light up at the prospect in quite the way I had been hoping. "Probably a while," she says.
Part of the structure of our event - policy defense - involves questioning, and I've always been good at discerning when someone is holding something back. Which is weird, because I'd gotten the vibe that her life was great - she's employed, doing something she's always seemed to enjoy?
"What do you mean?"
"It's not always the noble sort of work it seems like in competition, y'know?"
"Not really, no."
She laughs. "You're cross-examining me. Nice. Fine, I'll try to…. like, it's not bad, right? It pays the bills. I have my own little apartment, now. I eat alright, especially if I sneak into company luncheons. But… I know this may seem strange, when you're in the thick of it, advocating for the policies that will change the world, but like… it's so frustrating sometimes."
I'm not sure I can really imagine anything on the other side of the present moment - I'm sixteen, soon to be seventeen, the rest of the year's worth of school plus another to come ahead of me, doing exactly this. Classwork, speech prep, research, advocacy. For now - and for any future I can really imagine - that's all.
Like, Caroline and I and a bunch of other competitors can talk a good game about how the Capitol is authoritarianism wearing a slightly palatable mask, but in the end I like to think that I'll be able to put all of these thoughts to good use. I'll be able to change something, be able to help someone, keep doing what I'm doing - implement those policies, save those workers who would otherwise lose their lives along with their footing on a frozen-over dam.
"I guess a few months in the real world really crushes all of that optimism," Caroline says, reading my thoughts. "I always felt like I would keep moving up - like, I was a star in policy advocacy, right? But now I bring a man coffee every morning and make sure his files are in order and take notes on his meetings. I took five steps down."
My expression must be purely appalled, because she hastily adds, "But it beats the alternative, right? At least I have a shot at moving up. A lot of people would kill for that. It just requires me to pay my dues first. It'll be a while before I'm signing off on those policy briefings, is all."
I think I sort of understand where she's coming from, but there's a part of me that doesn't quite believe it's that much… like that. Could just be unwillingness.
Something even darker seems to flash across her face, furrowing her brow and turning her emotions into something inscrutable.
"Do you ever think about how the same Capitol that funds all that ridiculous fun competition stuff… well, fun is a generous word, but… do you ever think about how two of us from District Five die almost every year? How the best case scenario is only one of them coming home? How fucked up is that."
"It's your last year of eligibility," I suggest, perhaps a little too brightly.
I do think about it - of course I think about it. Everyone thinks about it. But there's this undercurrent of confusion. Obviously, we're going to pick up on the hypocrisy of training us to be the rising stars in our district's industry and then putting our names in a drawing for randomized death. But it's like… they know that we're going to know.
We learn about all of these things that are just not quite fair, and we also learn how powerless we are to stop them. Any time I'm reading into a factory's construction or employment records and I learn how much of the dam is Capitol-owned or how many of the supervisors are either Capitol-trained or originated, I get this weird tight feeling in the back of my throat - like all the stuff I'm doing is a wheel in a rat's cage, to distract it with exercise and amuse its owner while simultaneously occupying its attention so it can't escape the cage.
But the rat would never get out of the cage, even if it was bored and laying around. It might put up a fight though, and be really annoying to the person who owned it, but the rat could never win - the rat could never mount an effective uprising and restore its… divine equality to humans? I guess the metaphor part fails.
All this emphasis on helping the district, being the best in the district, making District 5 great, though - it just feels like a smokescreen to make us a little easier to control, maybe a little more productive or entertaining to the people who hold real power.
I don't say any of that to Caroline, though - even though I'm certain she's thought it too.
Instead, I smile and ask, "how are you going to celebrate finally being out of the pool?"
She slumps a little, gives me a look that is nothing short of defeated.
"Probably go home and get a jump on my work for tomorrow. Maybe have a drink. Sometimes it feels like that's all there is to do."
"At least you'll be free of the thing."
"Yeah," she says, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a half-smile. "Fingers crossed, right?"
"Fingers crossed," I agree.
I'm not really sure what future there is for me, or for any of us. Here, or anywhere. Free will isn't an illusion - I've never been able to believe that - but living in a place like District 5, freedom is definitively illusory.
That's a lot to think about on the way to the reaping.
"Should we head out?" I ask Caroline, passing her my updated outline for one last look over. "We can grab some food from the kitchen - I think we have some apples."
Caroline looks grateful and nods, skimming over my notes.
"This looks a lot better," she tells me. "You're going to do great in competition."
Taking with us a pair of bright yellow apples, it almost feels like we're on some sort of jaunt out to a picnic - the sun is shining and the streets are filled with people, even if the atmosphere is not quite festive.
I just wonder how long it will last. I wonder how long any of this can last - how long it will be before the smoke screens of district nationalism and unity start to fall away, until the rat stops spinning at its wheel and tries to gnaw its way out of the cage again.
That never works out well for the rat.
x
I, uh, don't have excuses, except for having two jobs on top of being a student and a research fellowship this summer... I've been busy, but I'm trying to prioritize writing a little more. Lifestyle upgrade! I just need something to keep me occupied, so this could work as a thing.
Let me know if you're actually interested in still reading - it helps!
